Introduce Yourself! (January 2018)
It's time for the very first "Introduce Yourself" thread of 2018! Whether you're new to the community or you've been here a while, here's what you should do:
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First, respond to someone else who's commented, just to say hello or leave them some feedback.
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Next, leave your own comment introducing yourself, what you're working on (or aspiring to work on), and your biggest goal for January and the new year. If you've introduced yourself before, tell us about your progress since then! Also, try to include a tip, piece of advice, or resource (book, link, etc.) you've found helpful!
That'll do it! We're excited to hear from everybody and see what you're working on!
Channing here, from the Indie Hackers team. 👋
We've spent a couple months developing a new product page feature for indie hackers, and this month we'll be testing them out with our interviewees and incorporating feedback before rolling them out to more users. We'll also be setting our sights on upgrading the forum functionality and experience.
In the advice column for this month, I'll implore anyone who's new to side projects to avoid perfectionism at all costs. Making, shipping, and iterating on products are all skills you hone through repetition. The same goes for building an audience, building a team, talking to users, and all the rest of it. Optimize for reps and for continually moving forward.
Hey @channingallen - thanks for doing all the work you do with indiehackers, it makes my 2.5 hour commutes waaaaaaay better!
So I'm not the only one Indie Hacking on the way, hmm, interesting
Damn that's a long commute!
Sorry, I should have said combined 2.5 hour commute (1.25 each way!) Either way its soul crushing!
long commute!
Hi Channing! Happy new year and I wish I had that advice a year ago.
The one request I have for the forum is just to make it load faster. I don't know if it's only because I'm in East Asia, but I always see the page come up and then have to wait a couple of seconds while a hoop spins in the middle of the screen and then finally content loads.
At first I thought maybe it was the site's tech stack but it looks like you're on nginx, which should be really snappy. Is Firebase to blame, maybe?
Coincidentally, I spent most of today working on this before seeing your comment. Channing just pointed this out to me an hour ago.
I only got to about a third of the total speed issues that I want to investigate overall, but they were significant. I just deployed my changes, so if you refresh the forum index you should notice a difference!
The issues were mostly around Firebase, btw. Not with the product or the company, but with my own usage. I'm loading data much more efficiently now for authenticated users.
🔥 Load times are much better today!
It's dramatically faster!
Really excited to see the product page!.
I see the "talk to users" advice given on IH often, but what do you think the best way is to actually talk to your users? Reach out via email, have a survey form sent via email.
How have you guys asked for user feedback for IH?
Email is a great way to start if you have them -- speaking as someone who has been on both sides of the conversation. Folks are generally helpful here in the forum as well.
Another useful place to get feedback is by sharing your project at local startup-related meetups. I find value in merely trying to explain the project in simple terms to someone with no prior context. It helps to refine your messaging.
In my opinion, in-person is the best way to reach out to your users. You can engage in a conversation, read their facial/ body expression just more data to work with. Given this is not the most convenient, you may consider talking to them over the phone. Also, It depends on who your customer is and when they are open to talking to you. Once, you have talked to enough folks and understand the pattern in the conversation, you can consider reaching out to them over the email or other written communication. Good luck!
When I was building a marketplace for cleaners in the past I posted job ads on Craigslist and required a phone call before I let them sign up.
I then basically just let them know that I wanted to make the best product I could for them and asked them if I could talk to them about their job.
Just do it. No fear!
Hi Channing!
Awesome job! I'm Frank. Cheers!
👋, 🙏
Hey Channing,
Thanks for your work at IndieHackers!
Can I ask whether you read any good material on the topic? Like how to conduct interviews well or how to interview someone properly.
Thanks!
Not much, to be honest. Like a lot of skills, you just have to accept that you won't be great when you start out, and improve with practice. So in a lot of ways, the most valuable individual skills in the beginning are durability and persistence.
Great advice, Channing. I have a tendency to want to perfect things before shipping and wanting to cram every feature in before letting people know about it. I look forward to breaking this habit, getting my ideas out there more quickly, and getting feedback before investing a lot of time in a particular project.
Perfectionism is the biggest challenge. No doubt. It's tough when you have an idea in your head, and you want it to come out just so. Something to reflect on for sure in 2018
Hi Channing! When is the new product page feature coming out?!
We've been rolling them out to IH interviewees first in order to iron out some kinks, but we'll open them up to everyone soon.
If I were a betting man, I'd bet on mid February. 😉
"Optimize for reps" - love it.
Channing Happy New Year. Looking forward to the new features. How are you staying on top of your goals?
Late reply!
Happy New Year to you too Tyson. Keeping up with goals is always a work in progress. For IH we do weekly meetings where we see what's gone well and what's gone poorly and make strong adjustments. I do some similar stuff with my personal projects.
Looking forward :-)
Just a thought on building this - would be great to incorprate the feedbacks of the community? For example some tweet storms asking whether we would prefer features X, Y, or Z would be great!
Hi everyone!
I am Robin, 25, from Belgium. Before, I ran an online real estate company for 4 years that grew to €250k/year in revenue (most of it being profits).
After selling part of my shares I decided to go to Asia and start another business: Manypixels.co (http://www.manypixels.co). Within the first two weeks we hit ~$3k MRR and should hit $10k by the end of the month. I learnt a lot on how to ship here and I want to thank this awesome community for this!
Kudos to you! Seems like your venture is taking off! Best of luck!
Thanks :)
That's great work! Best of luck
It's cool to see that you've created a product model out of your skillset. Congrats!
Sounds great. Congrats on following your dream. You'll soon surpass the old company - and in better weather I'm guessing :)
Thanks!
I could see myself only joining Indie Hackers when I finally have a landing page that I wanted feedback on, and I don't want to be that guy. So I made myself sign up today!
My main project for the year is teaching myself to code so I can work on my own side projects.
Good stuff! I have a similar goal. What resources are you using? I'm finding Free Code Camp helpful so far.
Hey, Great, I'm using Free Code Camp also, from my experience with it so far I'm finding it to be a good mix of hand holding and throwing you in the deep end once in a while.
Yes consistency is important, I've made plans/structured my week to enable this, I'm going to try and consistency put in 4 hours for 4 weekday night every week (with one night off) and then going to try and do 6 hours over each weekend unless I have specific plans that don't enable it (so ideally 22hr/wk). Have been going well so far but we'll see how I go with it over a longer period.
How far are you through it? I'm up to task [241].
Yeah, I'm pretty happy with it so far.
Wow, 4 hours a day is great! Good for you. I'm keeping it less intense, as I'm only aiming for consistency at this point. I've found that I often bite off more than I can chew, with the end result that I drop the project altogether.
I'm just about to start the Basic Javascript section, so pretty early on. I have done some Javascript in the past, though, so I'm expecting it to go relatively qucikly (at least at the beginning).
Yeah that's fair enough, I'm just trying to make a lot of progress quickly.
I have done a little C before so the basics was much the same, started learning pretty soon after.
Great on both counts!
Gotta' start somewhere, and you don't need to be perfect or "ready".
"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now"
Great skill to develop! I wish you the best of luck, and i hope you get to launch a project this year also!
Great initiative. If you do a small bit of coding and reading every day you will be fairly good at it within a couple of months and get REALLY good in about two years. Consistency is the key. Good luck. :)
Hey indiehackers! I'm Joan from everydayCheck - the simple and beautiful habit tracker.
After a rather slow third trimester of 2017 where the app went from $450 to $500 MRR I am really looking forward the next three months. I decided it was time for the v2. Now that I have a validated product people pay for and use daily, it's time to improve the product (wait! It's always time to improve the product!!). Besides adding really requested features such as a skip option or no weekend habits I really want to make a sprint on the mobile application. It's certainly a challenge to transfer the UI that benefits from a wide screen into the tiny screens mobile's have. I also want to introduce some gamification and other little improvements to boost engagement and make sure people make the best out of the app.
I'm also super eager to try the new IndieHacker's product page :D
As I hadn't posted in the introduce yourself threads for a while I think sharing my awesome-indie list of resources for IndieHackers might be of value to some of the new users! I still want to find the moment to make some sort of selection of the best posts and resurces for each stage of the process to monetize a sideproject!
PS: Today I posted my board on r/dataisbeautiful and it is starting to explode in visits :P Good way to start 2018!!
It's incredible that a habit tracker can still gain traction and hit a nerve. It goes to show that ideas are never truly saturated: there's always room for a fresh take on an old problem. Good job!
Yeah, especially when it comes to productivity tools, which I consider pretty personal (as in, everyone has very specific views on how to go about it, several tools solving the same problem can coexist by having different approaches!
Hi Joan! Your site looks really cool - I've been doing something similar in my journal the past couple weeks for a couple of new year's resolutions :D Thanks for sharing!
Hey Joan, that awesome-indie list looks interesting. I've used some other awesome-* lists and they are good. Thanks for creating it. Starred it. You might want to consider adding Paul Jarvis' newsletter to it. I will now proceed to introduce myself in this thread, although I saw it late :)
Cheers, all.
Congrats on your success so far! I've seen you commenting on here and glad to know you're making great progress. Have you made changes to your website recently? It's looking very slick and your copy has become sharper.
Can I message you to get some design tips? ;)
Best of luck in 2018 :D
hey Sarwech! apparently I oversaw this reply, sorry!
Yeah, I keep doing small improvements but now I want to make bigger changes all at once, they won't be that huge, because "when something works, don't touch it" haha but I think it will be for the good :P
Definitely feel free to shoot me an email and see if I can help!
Cheers!!
Congrats on EverydayCheck Joan. I haven't tried it myself, but it does seem to have a bright future ahead. Also, I'm quite a fan of how you designed your front page, which is very simple and efficient. It was a good inspiration on my own app.
(there are interesting conversations on the reddit thread you mentioned, just upvoted it)
thanks Gui! never lose a chance to add a link to your app! :P
oh, I did not write it here out of courtesy to not pollute your comment thread :) Especially since it is mentioned on this page.
Hi, my name is Imanuel (from Trinidad and Tobago) and I accomplished my first goal for 2018 which was to launch something! I made a tech startup news blog https://techstartups.news/ that highlights global tech news. Its minimal on purpose with busy people in mind. :)
Well done for shipping!
I'd suggest a "sign up for updates" to start building a reader-user base.
Hey Squiffy thank you very much! I'd like to keep it very minimal and non-invasive to my readers so I'll look for a way to do a subscribe form without something like a pop up. :)
Hi, my name's Kevin, and I'm working on GrowSurf (https://growsurf.com) -- a free tool that automates viral growth for your website.
Hey, Kevin. I watched your video and I like it! It seems like SumoKing giveaway.
I'm actually planning on launching the premium service for my site within the next 2 or hopefully 1 months and have been thinking about incentives like 2 month free trials to get beta signups so I'm directly in your target market.
One thing that would be really appealing would be to remove Mail Chimp from the process since they start charging after just 2,000 emails and I'm going for account creation (which includes an email component) rather than building up a marketing list.
Thanks for the feedback! Mailchimp is completely optional and you can choose to skip that step if you want :)
Let me know if you need help integrating or have any other questions -- I am kevin@growsurf.com
Hey hacker folks! 👋
My name is Julian, I am based in Amsterdam, but originally from Bulgaria.
I am a programmer full-time and have been working on https://weardulo.com/ as a side hustle now for about an year and a half. We were in product development for about a year and launched our webshop about 3 months ago.
We hit 2K (EUR) in the first month, second was lower (expected after a launch) with about 500 (EUR), but starting to grow and gain some traction.
It's only me and my co-founder (also a programmer) running it, so we look at it as a tech company, given the innovation in fabrics we are developing, as well as the processes we are adopting, given our IT backgrounds.
Hit me up at anytime! I hope I can provide some experience and ideas of how to leverage an IT background and use it to create physical products!
We also have a podcast, where we talk with other small business owners, who are also in the trenches, hacking 😉 You can check it out here - https://weardulo.com/blogs/the-dulo-show (will be working to complete that page today 😀)
Hey guys.
I'm Aleks and I'm also from Bulgaria. If you're back in Bulgaria, I;m open for coffee any time.
Would love to! Can you please, drop me a line at julian@weardulo.com to connect and let's take it from there!
I am going to introduce myself here since I am Julian's co-founder at DULO.
He did a great job introducing the business we are building. I will only add this podcast here - it's a 10-minute, compressed version of our story from the Side Hustle School podcast: https://sidehustleschool.com/episode/383
Hi, its Tyson. December was a really busy month at my day job. My food site https://bestfoodnearme.com is still there. I would like to get some more dishes added and also add some blog content.
Showing up every day and making an effort is the best tip I can think of this month.
Hey Tyson! This seems like simple advice but it's not easy to do. Habit and momentum is so precious when it comes to building your own thing.
Happy new year folks!
I’m taking January off from consulting to launch an MVP for https://GlutenFreedom.today which is like Google for Certified Gluten Free products.
I’m building it with React, Next.js, Styled-components, and Graph.cool for a backend. If you want, you can follow along on Twitter @beedesignllc
-Brandon
Nice — there's definitely a big audience for you out there. The question is how to reach them 🤔. Good luck!
Hi, I'm Rob and i'm attempting to start a small business developing software primarily in the Microsoft/Windows store on PC, Xbox and Mobile using C# UWP but also expanding out now to Andorid and iOS.
I've spend 18 months learning the tools and techniques in my "spare" time and am getting more serious delivering now.
I am currently working on a writing app called Easy Writer and a food diary app called Lazy Food Diary.
Easy Writer is my main project at the moment, Lazy Food Diary is more of an "experiment-in-force" using Xamarin for cross platform development.
I'm also supporting my other apps in store.
Considering the lack of a decent, updated, twitter app in Microsoft Store, I'm also re-considering starting one of those.
Ideas everywhere! Just have to chose the right ones.
Thanks for reading!
Rob.
Hey Rob, first time meeting a C# developer on here! I'm a front end developer myself (self-taught). Really cool that you're developing for Xbox as well :D
Incidentally, one of my first coding projects was a food diary app ^_^
I'm working on FinMod to help new SaaS founders better forecast their revenues and costs. Check it out at http://getfinmod.com!
Are any of your projects SaaS based? If not, I'd still be happy to help you (as well as fellow indie hackers) with anything business/marketing related. Do give me a shout and best of luck with your projects!
Hey there!
It's surprisingly hard to find C# and Windows devs (and even store users) as the other stores get all the love and attention. For what ever reason they seem to hang out In different places (or not together at all?)
So, good to meet you!
Xbox is an interesting market; it's growing and I'm seeing lots of downloads and interest but the advertising model simply doesn't work. It's one of those know-your-audience and also a bit of know-their-interactions kind of things. They are happy to buy stuff but you don't get clicks on that interface so advertising is not viable as a business model.
Lesson learned!
I do in fact have a couple of SaaS apps and Easy Writer is going to be SaaS when it ships (95% sure, anyway).
Cheers!
Rob.
Interesting, perhaps you can put together a tool to help find Windows & Xbox indie hackers ;)
It seems hard to target gamers, especially following up when they're not on their Xbox and, when they are, they're probably spending the majority of their time gaming. Great to hear it's starting to work out though.
Cool! Look forward to hearing more about Easy Writer and your other SaaS apps!
Hi guys!
My name is WWWillems, I'm currently bootstrapping TeamHut (https://teamhut.co) after my full time client work.
I made TeamHut for freelancers and digital teams who need to manage a lot of bookmarks and documents.
TeamHut makes it easy to share and organise bookmarks, documents and notes with your team.
I'm always looking for constructive feedback, so please let me know if there's anything I can do to improve the landing page!
I've mostly enjoyed my well deserved holidays, so I didn't manage to tackle my December goals. That's ok.
January will be all about finishing the folder sharing feature.
Good luck everyone, and keep on hacking!
I might use it for our company since we share a lot of documents with clients! Feel free to reach out to me :-)
Hi Vinrob, great news!
Keep an eye on your inbox, I'll be emailing you shortly. Thanks!
Good God, is it that time again already? I swear you only posted the December one last week.
Someone is stealing whole days from each month. I want my 11 days back (little historical reference there)!
Sooooo whatcha workin on?
That's what I'm saying!
Im currently working on a super simple microservice - https://sportfixturesapi.com which is coming along nicely - I have a full membership / payments / subscriptions website ready to launch (that bit was way more involved than what I had imagined in my head! - I have the API ready to go as well, but im just doing some design work on the endpoint threory as once its up I dont want to radically change the url schemes as I add more sports!
As i finish writing this up I get to channings advice column point and realise all of the above is pointless and I should just ship it. So i think I will. brb!
Hey there Indie Hackers,
I'm Cecil; and I'm totally new Indie Hackers. I've been hooked on the process of ideating and building marketable products ever since I built my first startup, which has since fizzled out. But the whole experience of ideating, building, and iterating left me with desiring more of the startup world. I'm currently working on my second venture with some amazing co-founders and we're building The Greeting Card Club (https://www.thegreetingcardclub.com/). I've taken on the responsibility of marketing, which has had its fair share of challenges. Over the next few months I'm hoping to learn growth hacking techniques!
A piece of advice: One of my co-founders, a more experienced indie hacker/entrepreneur, told me that you know you're doing something right when you're feeling nervous. We were actually about to pull the trigger on our pre-launch campaign for The Greeting Card Club and I found myself nervous to tell blast my network about my work. Moral of the story: Be nervous, it's a sign that you're working and building.
Cheers!
hi Channing! Thanks for creating a great site and community@IH. Hoping to learn some things for my ventures in 2018! Yew!!
Thanks for joining!
I am aspiring to create a product that can generate myself and my family. I have been working on some iOS app (including scanner, coloring book). They have been doing okay but not enough revenue / profit for me to quit my job yet. I am looking for some good advices in identifying a market and marketing.
We'll be happy to help however we can. And the fact that you've made any money at all in the iOS app space means you're further along than the average entrepreneur, so keep going!
Hy everyone - i'm new here :) We've built Chicisimo, a fashion data platform. We've actually built two things: (i) a fashion app to help people decide what to wear; and (ii) a data platform to understand people's taste. We love what we are building! And today, we are starting to share our machine learning approach yay!
Glad to have you hear Gabriel, and looking forward to more posts about Chicisimo and its future iterations.
💪🏽
Hey!
I'm Nino and I'm the founder&owner of Raverus, Croatian based company with 3k+ clients. We are specialized for development of different business applications/solutions, especially in these areas:
anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing,
financial services/reporting (fiscalization, notes to the financial statements),
time&attendance management,
personal data protection and user assistance.
Recently I launched spin-off project called Guideblocks (https://Guideblocks.com) - SaaS solution for dynamic help and user onboarding.
I initially visited IndieHackers to promote this new project - but - after browsing a while, it seems like a place to stay, to ask, to answer, to comment, to read, ... :)
Welcome, Nino!
Ha, yes, this seems to be a kind of open secret for several makers in the community. 😉 And we don't mind too much — if we're doing our jobs, the quality of the feedback and advice will trump the quality of small spikes in traffic.
Hi I am Ishaan. I'm from New Delhi, India. I created Enpointer (www.enpointer.com) as a side project. It is an issue tracker for agile software teams. Would love to have feedback on it.
Also looking forward to be part of Indie Hackers community and connect with some great folks :)
Welcome!
Awesome. We're all looking forward to it right back.
Hi, my name is Jeremi. I am from Poland 🇵🇱 but currently on 6-month trip to SE Asia 🇻🇳🇰🇭, while working on some of my stuff.
We have 2 projects going on (together with my wife):
Vsnipp - is a code library for the developers. I felt I would like to have such product for myself and my team so I built it. I struggle to get any traction at all right now. We soft launched in December. You can see what's about on https://www.vsnipp.com
Harder choices - it's my personal/technical blog. I started series about reinforcement learning, with 1st post already live. harderchoices.com
I have one idea which I hope to develop soon, so let me pitch you:
"AI instead of A/B testing" Let AI help you build your website. I would like to build a set of tools for devs/companies to implement AI on their site. Simple example: "You have X different buttons/texts/colors, instead of making an A/B test, just put it out through my (future) platform define a target and let AI decide which is best"
Sorry for a lot of self promotion. I just wanted to share what I am working on. I am very excited about this community which I just found and I hope I can bring some value to you too!
Nothing wrong with a bit of tasteful self promotion every once and a while here! Hopefully I speak for the rest of the community in saying we're excited to help however we can with your projects and see bigger and better iterations in the future. 🙌
Thanks! I am looking forward to it and contrubuting something myself 😃
Hi, Indie Hackers! 👋
I'm an artist, inventor, and engineer who's working on adding entrepreneur to that list. Everything I've seen on this site has been really inspiring and I'm excited to start contributing to this community.
My biggest goal for this year is to make enough money from one or all of my side projects to cover my base expenses. It's really important to me to have financial freedom and be able to work on things I love while not getting burnt out at a 9-to-5.
One of the projects I'm working on is http://derivv.com. It's a way for you to easily create multiple sizes of the same image. The idea came from my time at Walmart.com where the creative department was processing a lot of images for the site manually using Photoshop. I built a simple cropping tool that had a preconfigured set of sizes and they could upload a batch of images and get them all resized. Derivv is sorta like it but allows you to add your own configuration and tweak the crop for each image after you've done the initial resize. It's also 100% browser-based, which I think is kinda neat.
Some advice—don't get so wrapped up in your projects that you don't see the big picture. Sometimes our egos can get in the way of doing what actually matters and it's easy to get caught up in the little things that don't really have an impact. It's always good to take a step back and look at your projects from someone else's perspective so you can prioritize what you work on.
Great goal. It's the milestone that allows you to pursue other milestones with a clear mind.
Good luck with Derivv and your other projects — looking forward to helping out however we can!
Hi Indie Hackers!
Goal for January:
My biggest goal for January is figuring out if a product catalog management tool I built for a friend is something other companies of the same kind (small FOB companies, wholesalers, distributors, manufacturers, etc) might find useful. I'd like to try to see if I can sell it to 3-5 people for $9/month as a way to test if this is something I should continue to put time into. We'll see what happens. If I can't, I'll be moving on to a new experiment :). The tool I built is http://merchantbot.co/ and I created it for a friend who wanted to create a web page for each of her 200 products without having to spend more than a few minutes making it come to life on the web. She wanted to be able for her customers (retailers) to browse her 200 products by brand or category. Here's the brand page she was able to build with this tool incase you get curious: http://ox.merchantbot.co/catalog/brands
Tip/piece of advice I've found helpful:
I've been binge listening to a ton of the podcast episodes and I've been really enjoying it. I like the tips related to not spending more than a few weeks to build something and then going out there and getting feedback from real customers. Best of luck to all the Indie Hackers out there on this new year! Cheers!
Nice to have you here, and nice to see you've already started your first discussion re: Merchantbot!
Aye — it's easy to get sucked into over-polishing tools people might not want. Cheers, and looking forward to seeing the next iteration of your app!
Hello, I’m Dante, and I’m a freelance writer, content creator, and blogger.
I discovered the Indie Hackers Podcast last year when I heard Courtland's interview in the Y Combinator Podcast. I've been listening to it since then. It's now one of my favorite podcasts in iTunes.
I’m the founder and editor of TechEasy, a blog dedicated to making the topics of technology, startups, and entrepreneurship easier for non-techies to understand. I regularly write articles, opinion pieces, news, product reviews, and other write-ups related to technology and business there. It has been featured by Wordpress in Freshly Pressed and now has over 4,700 followers.
I also co-founded Haute Royale, an events company, with my wife. I’m its social media manager and I’m responsible for content creation and digital marketing. I also wrote its script for its television commercial. It was aired over a major network in the city where i live.
I’ve also been a published writer since 2013. My write-ups have appeared in The Philippines Graphic, the country’s leading newsweekly and literary magazine; The Philippine Daily Inquirer, the country’s most-respected and widely-read newspaper; and The Freeman, one of the top dailies in the city where I live.
As a freelance writer, I’ve written all kinds of web copies: product and service reviews, descriptions of products in websites, and articles and essays about various topics: from movies to entertainment to business to the arts and humanities, and everything in between.
If you wish to contact me or view my portfolio, you may reach me through these channels:
Email: danteocualesjr@gmail.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dante-cuales-jr-b47269141/
TechEasy blog: http://bibliophilewannabe.wordpress.com/
Twitter: @TechEasyBlog @dantecualesjr
Let me know how I can help you. I'd love to work with you.
Hey there Dante, nice to have you.
Keep your eyes out for threads like this one — there are plenty of people here on the lookout for content writers. 👍
Hey Channing, very happy to be here!
Wow, thank you so much for that link!
I'm very glad to hear that. I'm also on the lookout for folks who might need my services.
Hey all!!! 👋🤙
I'm Jonathan, working out of the bay area. Director of UX for a few companies then started my own design firm. We just launched our side project. A car shopping app for iOS:
https://itunes.apple.com/app/spin-car-shopping/id1133713615?mt=8
I'm here to get tips on growth hacking and social marketing. Really obsessed with ASO right now. I just designed a keyword recommendation tool.
If anyone needs help with UX or ASO, give me a shout!
Hey, really nice design!
I've also been obsessed with ASO. What's worked extremely well for us is asking people what they are thinking when they search for an app like ours. The right keywords pop up! :)
Thanks! And, thanks for the tip on keywords. =)
We've used a bunch of tools. This one is pretty helpful...
http://www.appkeywords.io
That's a nice-looking app! Feel free to create a thread re: growth hacking or ASO (etc.) whenever a question strikes you — I'm sure a lot of our mobile indie hackers are eager to get more involved.
Thanks. Yeah, we got a bit obsessed with the design.
I'm sure I'll have more ASO questions. When I do, I'll take you up on your advice.
Cheers!
Hello all,
I saw this thread late (for the month, and thanks to Courtland sending an email to me about it, as a recent member), so am introducing myself on it now:
I'm Vasudev Ram, an independent software developer, consultant, trainer and writer/blogger, with many years experience in various tech areas and biz domains. Worked for large and small software companies earlier and am an indie from some years.
I created xtopdf, a Python toolkit for PDF creation from other data formats. I also was the team leader for a successful database middleware product developed in C on Windows some years earlier.
My business has two main lines, since going indie, for some years now: 1) consulting (hands-on development) for startups, mainly, and 2) corporate and individual training.
Major tech skills are Python, SQL and relational databases, C (rusty, but did a lot with it earlier), Unix and Linux command-line and shell scripting, PDF generation, and many open source libraries and tools.
Goal is to create and sell an online course and/or book in the near future (a few months) and also some software products and more courses/books over time.
I am interested in communicating with fellow entrepreneurs and wannabes here, sharing tips, knowledge, etc. And I'm open to the possibility of collaborating on projects or products too.
I can also offer mentoring via Codementor to people learning to program, or even existing programmers with specific needs for tech help, in the areas where I have skills. My Codementor profile: https://www.codementor.io/vasudevram
Cheers,
Vasudev
Web site: https://vasudevram.github.io
Blog: https://jugad2.blogspot.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/vasudevram
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/vasudevram
Forgot to mention: Anyone interested in my product launches (apps/books/courses), feel free to follow me on Gumroad here: https://gumroad.com/vasudevram/follow or subscribe to my blog; link to blog is above, and subscribe link is in the blog header. I'll announce each product via both Gumroad and my blog.
Great. We're looking forward to helping you get there however we can, so feel free to bounce ideas off the community any time.
Thanks, Channing, will do that. And also, anyone here, feel free to ask me questions in any areas where you think I might be able to help. My profile links above mention those areas.
I'm a noob to the Indie Hackers community, but hoping it will spark my creative desires again. I like writing, art (all types), music and web design. My mind is a cluttered mess so trying to sort and go...
Lucky you: you've found a community where noobs are the norm — and I think it's best that way. We can all stumble up the mountain together.
Feel free to share any questions or feedback that'll let us help you get started!
Hi there,
I've been lurking around for a while, and just now decided to introduce myself.
I have a full-time software development job, but I really want to start something on my own.
The only problem I have - I don't really have an idea or problem to solve for myself, but hopefully I find something, perhaps, through this community :).
Any hints on how to find an idea? I know, this questions has been asked so many times, sorry about that.
Here's my go-to link for answering this question: http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
Paul Graham published the essay in 2012 and I still can't find many better resources for idea formulation!
Best of luck, and nice to have you here.
Sure, I read it multiple times, the problem I have is that I don't really have many problems or it feels like the problem I have are too niche?
Sometimes people give an advice to go out from your comfort zone and meet people of a different trade, do you think this might work?
I guess part of the issue is that I don't really have anybody in close circle who actually bootstrapped something.
Ah, I see. Yeah, I think it's a good idea to try to branch out and leave your comfort zone — but this means different things for different people.
Courtland once tweeted a different approach to coming up with ideas that was kind of interesting:
So if all else fails, you could give that a shot. For example, take a basic product you're familiar with, clone a copycat version of that business, and pay attention to the problems you run into along the way (with the aim of making a real product to address those problems).
🤷♂️
Thanks, sounds like a viable approach.
So far I've been thinking hard and I think I have a tiny idea for a desktop app, perhaps I'll try to start from there.
Hey I'm David, I'm a designer by trade and a music producer in my free time.
Howdy David. Glad to see someone with a music background on the site — the greater the range of interests here, the better the discussions! Looking forward to helping you out however we can.
Hey IndieHackers Im Shavant! Though I have been an avid follower of indie hackers for quite some time now; I am not sure why I am only getting around to joining just now. Better Late then Never! Anyway I have always been into doing side projects as a way to learn and out of curiosity. Even though I've always wanted to pursue my own ventures; IndieHackers has really opened my eyes on pursuing them as a real plausibilities. Looking forward to make some contacts and creations.
Howdy Shavant. Great to finally have you hear 😉
Hey everyone, I'm Kyle!
I recently discovered Indie Hackers and am glad to see a truly helpful and supportive community around bootstrapped startups.
I'm into tech and have fun connecting things on the internet (web development). I've been around the block with several startups that have used my skillset to build their businesses and have enjoyed seeing some of my ideas come to life.
In the last few years, I've become somewhat specialized as a web app developer for the marketing company I'm currently a part of and find myself creating various online tools for our clients.
Ultimately, I want to take the skillset I've learned from my day job and use my nights and weekends to turn one of my own ideas into a full time gig.
Awesome! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with — or helping you come up with it.
Hi,
I'm Alberto from Spain. I'm working on a desktop application for frontend developers. It will blow your mind :) My plan is to ship it this year. I know, it's not a very specific deadline :P But I'll start working on the website, collecting beta users, do pre-sales, etc. real soon.
Ha, well definitely you've mastered the art of suspense. 😊 Looking forward hear more about it.
Hey guys I've been hearing so much about Indiehackers that I just had to join!! I'm an artist/innovator based in Cape Town, South Africa. The reason why I joined is that I've always felt founders aren't really that connected. There world and its problems being increasingly solvable once we can collaborate our efforts, resources, talent etc.
I also agree with this statement. This is also one of my main reasons for joining even after reading and listening to indie hackers for quite some time now. Welcome!
Very true. There's a lot to be gained both when founders connect with one another and when they connect with the greater world around them.
Vivek here, having 7.5 years of experience as full stack developer. I'm here for part-time or freelancing work.
Thanks
Great to have you here!
Hi! I'm Zuhayeer, a student studying CS at Berkeley. I love Indie Hackers and was inspired by some of the projects here to build out http://levels.fyi, a website that lets you compare career ladders across companies. Would love any feedback from anyone here!
Currently, I'm reading the book Principles by Ray Dalio and I really resonated with the idea that we should strive towards truth and be objective about our weaknesses. Once we know our weaknesses, we can work to find ways to get around them and even find people who'd complement our skills.
Welcome to Indie Hackers Zuhayeer! 👋 Levels.fyi is pretty cool, looking forward to seeing future iterations.
Hi everyone!
I'm Andrew from Austin and I'm hoping to launch something later next month for students to help them take better class notes.
If you know a student who might need some help taking better class notes, please reach out (no charge of course). Trying to get some beta testers & release hype.
And if you have a product or service that can help me with marketing, I'm all ears. That's certainly my weak spot.
Welcome Andrew!
Looking forward to seeing the 📝 product.
Hey!
I'm Jack from WP Fusion. I found this site because of the interview with Pippin Williamson of Sandhills Development. Been reading the interviews and browsing the forums... this is a really great resource!
My company is Very Good Plugins, we develop WordPress plugins. Our main product is WP Fusion, it connects WordPress to CRM systems (https://wpfusionplugin.com/). The plugin turns four years old this month, and currently brings in $10k in MRR. That amount has more than doubled since last year and I'm hoping to double it again by this time next year.
My real weakness is messaging and marketing, I'm more of a "guy behind the curtain" when it comes to building software, but I'm working on improving those skills. Hopefully can pick up a few tips here.
Thanks!
Nice to have you, Jack! Hm, I've dabbled in WordPress over the years and I swear I recall running into WP Fusion once or twice in the wild, so congratulations. You'll have to do an interview with us some time!
Thanks! I've got another product I'm launching soon, I actually just started another thread about it. Maybe I'll wait a couple of months until things get a little more exciting on that front, but would definitely love to do an interview at some point :)
Hi, I'm Lox from the Caribbean and I'm a big fan of Indie Hackers and the impact they're making on the world :)
Awesome — nice to have you here!
Long time lurker first time submitter. I'm finally trying to make 2018 the year I ship some side projects. I'll hopefully be posting my first project shortly.
Happy New Year, and hello to everyone!
I'm Jeff, 30, living in Vancouver BC and am a Co-founder of Mealime, one of the top meal planning apps on iOS and Android.
I've been a lurker for some time now and figured it was finally time to contribute and give some value, as I've received so much from this community.
So, hello! 👋 Looking forward to chatting with many of you!
🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦 ! Jeff you have tons of 5 star reviews on Google Play. You're killing it. App looks beautiful. What's the revenue model? When did you launch? You should definitely contribute an article and tell your story.
Thanks Jeremy - 🇨🇦 indeed! Hope you're not freezing yourself in Toronto ❄️ 😉
Mealime has been around, in one way or another, for nearly 5 years now. We started as an email service, then a web app, then pivoted to a freemium model and launched the mobile apps in early-mid 2016. It's been quite the 🎢 of ups and downs. I'll definitely consider contributing a story - thanks for the suggestion!
Every looks amazing! That must be quite the project. A story of your own would be quite the interesting read.
Thanks for the kind words Jeff.
Such a classic lean startup story. Obviously extremely well executed.
Yeah, we're back to normal temps for the time being. I don't mind the cold so much. All the best! Good meet!
All the best to you as well! 👋
Looks awesome, signed up and will give it a try.
Moved to Vancouver not that long ago, don't know how busy you're, but would you be interested to meet for a coffee/tea here in Vancouver, just curious to hear your story? :)
Nice! I'd be happy to meet up for a ☕or tea. I work from home so my schedule is quite flexible. Shoot me a DM here or at jbunn87@gmail.com and let's set something up!
Thanks, sent an email!
Hi all!
I'm Gui, working on MediaTag, which helps you organize photos, videos and any webpage. It is very visual oriented, targeting mostly filmmakers and photographers. And it is also a good tool for anyone who simply needs to save important pages they find online.
MediaTag was launched mid-september, but really, the launch is an ongoing process, which might never end. I'm now spending more time marketing than developing. I found a lot of inspiration in the book Traction, which has been mentioned on IndieHackers many times. Finding the right channel for the right message to the right audience takes time, but can be a fun process. At the moment, I'm trying guest blogging, weekly newsletter, blogging and "engineering as marketing". Each work for different audiences, so I'll keep pushing each.
Hello again!
We're no strangers to this process! (And we also took a lot of cues from Traction.)
Hi, I'm Andreas from Switzerland. I recently relaunched my side project awesomereact.com, a website collecting the best videos about React and its ecosystem. Currently I'm promoting it on twitter and getting some traction.
In terms of generating revenue, I'm experimenting with affiliate links at the moment, but no success so far. Still very early and probably not yet enough traffic.
I'm following Indie Hackers since the beginning and really love the interviews and the podcast! The development of the community and the possibility to now publish directly on the site are great and an inspiration for my site.
If I decide to try react I will check out your website! I don't even have to bookmark it, it is almost impossible to forget. 😂
Hi Andreas - great to meet a fellow indie hacker from Switzerland! We'll soon have enough of us for a meetup ;)
Hi Louis, nice to meet you! Do you know any other indie hackers from Switzerland? I would absolutely be up for a meetup.
Unfortunately none who are on this forum (yet)! I followed you on Twitter, let's keep in touch!
Hi, I'm Ruto Collins from Andela.com - where you hire remote software engineers from Africa.
I am working on launching something for the on demand industry this year.
Don't over-engineer it is my advice!
Good luck! Hopefully we'll hear about your projects and get the chance to help wherever we can.
Hi Everyone! I'm Michelle from the US (Pennsylvania). I recently released http://nextexpense.com which is a utility for Harvest users that records email receipts into their Harvest account just by forwarding the email. Users of the service should be able to auto-forward email so the process of getting email receipts into Harvest can be automated. The project started out as a simplified expense tracker (for small/one person businesses) excepting entries by text and email. I switched the focus of the application to be a Harvest integration. I'm still trying to validate this direction so any feedback is appreciated! thanks!
Hi Michelle,
Did you post something about this about the middle of last year, possibly a little earlier? The idea seems to ring a bell and I’m sure I was talking to someone about it on here.
No...wasn't me. :)
In that case, assuming the other person is still pursuing the idea, you've got competition!
Hi, my name's Henrik. I'm from Denmark and working on Mimer Metrics (https://mimer.io/) - a reporting and dashboard tool for marketers and smaller agencies.
My goal for 2018 is to find product/market fit and get traction - easy right? :-D (Hit me up for a Mimer Metrics discount coupon to get it at a great IH price)
My Tip is to use SMART goals. Helps a lot in setting and reaching goals:
Specific – target a specific area for improvement.
Measurable – quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.
Assignable – specify who will do it.
Realistic – state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.
Time-related – specify when the result(s) can be achieved.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria)
Ohhh I like your product. I'm not a marketer by trade but it sure does make sense that any digital agency that helps to build campaigns might want to do the media strategy, buying, reporting, etc. and have the ability to whip together white label dashboards for clients. TBH I have a bunch of friends on the creative side (freelance and small agencies) and none of them have moved into the other side of the business. They're probably leaving a lot of work/money on the table.
👋
If only!
That's a great algorithm for goal-setting, and there's no better time to be smart about goals than the beginning of the year! Best of luck.
My name is Harry, from Hong Kong.
I am working on Sorted, a task scheduling product (http://staysorted.com). It has turned into 3rd year, and we are working on the next big update Sorted 3.
We are looking for beta testers to try our totally redesigned app. If you are interested, please leave me a message, and better send me your email address for invitation. Thanks.
Sorted looks sleek! All the best with it.
Thanks. We just launched Sorted³, please check this out. https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1306893526?mt=8
Nice! it sounds like your indie hack has picked up some steam! How many of you are working on it?
All my devices are Asus, so I'll have to wait for your Android or Windows version!
Sorry to miss this message from long time ago. We are two developers. Since we are focusing on iOS and macOS at the moment, Android will come out later.
No worries and thanks for the reply. I'm still on Windows and probably won't be going back to Mac for a long time since now I can have lots of RAM an escape key and a well-integrated linux subsystem. I still have my old macbook, but it's mostly been sitting in a drawer for a year and a half.
Hi guys!
I've been working on a tool to manage the hiring process for a few months and I just had my first official beta user 🎉.
This month I will iron out the small issues I have already identified and start onboarding more beta users. A nice number would be 10.
As for this year, the goal is to:
make my first $ from this project
validate the idea
Oh and if any of you guys are planning to hire in the next days/weeks -> let me know if you want beta access!
Cool! Good luck on this. If you haven’t already read Traction, I think you’d really like it because it details the 19 different channels for squiring new customers.
Hello 👐,
I'm Laurent, the author of Medical ID on Android (medicalid.info). I am working hard to launch my first SaaS product this month:
https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/noticeable
Love the idea behind noticeable. The more people who build things out in the open, the more others will have the courage to try to do the same. Good luck!
Nice start! I am Rizki, currently working on a project named [chatkoo.com], it's simple bot builder for recovering abandoned cart, shipping updates, and more. It has seamless integration with ecommerce platform.
Currently in private beta, but will open to the public anytime soon. I open to any feedbacks.. :)
My goals for next 2 months: Achieve $2000 MRR. and happy to share the learning points on IH
Ambitious goal! Excited to hear updates.
Kabue Charles - working on Curriculum, and requesting some feedback here -> https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/would-be-great-to-get-your-honest-feedback-on-curriculum-http-curriculum-co-ke--4de75677c9
Hey Guys,
I am Meghdoot and excited to join indiehacker community
Hi everyone! Just joined the site a couple of weeks ago :) my name's John and I'm a CS major in my junior year of college. I'm looking forward from learning from the community, and I'm working on a tiny side project that randomly matches people in a club for lunch every week :D
Hello Indie Hackers! Just joined but been drawing inspiration from the interviews on here for the past year or more. I started my own video creative agency years back and have been running that. But after going to my first Startup Weekend a few years ago (and winning it!), I came out with a profitable app and got seduced by the scalability and reach one person can get by writing code. After years of dabbling in tutorials, I used the profits from that app to do a coding bootcamp and learn for real, and have been growing the skills ever since.
I have several projects I've been working on, but looking to lock in and get traction on one right now. It is a web app that lets you listen to music an a number of immersive environments and on different devices. In essence allowing you to put on your headphones and instantly transport your desk to some other place out of the office. Had my own version running for awhile and it is great for concentration.
Looking forward to getting feedback when the beta is ready.
Hello. First time here in Indie Hackers. I run a website called Luxor Forums and my goal for the rest of the year is to grow and expand the traffic to Luxor Forums. Go to luxorforums.com Hope to see everyone there!
Hello all,
My name is Amitoj, from Roseveille, CA (north of Sacramento). I am a Mechanical engineer, just dabbling in Web development. My goal is to launch 4 web products in 2018. Pretty much caught up on all the Indie Hackers podcasts. Some great content, very inspirational stories.
Hello! 👋
My name's Joel and I'm a developer from the cold north of Sweden! Been coding since the teenage years and currently working (mainly remote) for a cool little startup called Karma (http://karma.life/en).
The other hours of the day are spent with the family (wife + 2.5 yo son + one on the way) and just having fun with coding some ongoing projects.
The main focus right now is an app for making sharing finances with, for example, a spouse a more enjoyable, fun and automatic experiences for all parties. I'm currently using a Google Spreadsheet but the UX for my wife (non tech) is atrocious :).
Then a just-for-fun-project is a super specific ride sharing (web) app for Skiers and other snow enthusiasts with the goal of reducing the number of cars travelling to go skiing (so there's some snow left to ski on in the future) and also meeting like minded individuals, this has been an ongoing project for 8+ years but I'll be damned if it wont get actually usable this time :)
The goal is to launch both of these to beta users in Q1 of 2018! We'll see if #2 will disrupt that plan though :D
Lastly a tip for other devs with limited amounts of time (who can benefit from some speed boosters) I really love the v2 of react-redux-firebase (http://react-redux-firebase.com).
Hopefully this introduction will be the kick-in-the-butt I need to start engaging on this lovely platform! Thanks for all the hard work and especially the podcast which has been a companion for many hours by now.
Welcome Joel!
Awesome. Best of luck with this, and we're looking forward to helping out however we can.
Thanks!
👋 Hi everyone!
I've been meaning to join this amazing community for a while, and finally signed up today. It seems like such an inspiring and friendly place filled with people building genuinely great products.
I'm James, co-founder of GoSquared ( https://www.gosquared.com ) – a smart customer communication platform designed to turn visitors into customers. We've been around a while, and I originally started the business with two of my best friends in school.
Goal for 2018 is to ensure I get out there more in communities like this to gain feedback on what we're doing at GoSquared, and to see if I can share my product experience with anyone who's willing to listen :D
Looking forward to speaking to many of you!
👋 A good many of us are willing to listen, so you made the right choice! Great to have you here, and looking forward to hearing more about Go Squared and helping however we can.
👋 I'm Jeremy. I just launched my first personal project in ~10 years. I think some of you may be into it ;)
In 2004 I started an eCommerce business to help musicians sell direct to fans. Since then I've been working with large banks on mobile apps, customer experience, and most recently moving them to agile/cloud.
Happy to be back building again. Even happier that we've built something for online business owners.
This is Every: www.everyfinancial.com
It's a bank account for online businesses. It's fast, smart, and has no monthly fees.
We are beta testing and building an early access list now. We expect to do a wider release in late Spring.
We are bootstrapped (maybe I should write an article like "Bootstrapping a Bank"?). Looking forward to hearing from the IH community!
Hello Everyone,
My name is Rajesh Dhiman. I am an independent full stack web developer from India. 3 years ago, I left my 9 to 5 job to start a startup. The startup didn't work well but because of it, I learned nodejs and some front end techs. And now I have some clients and nice projects to work on.
Also, I am up to contribute to any other projects which help me learn new things and improve my skills.
Hi there
I'm currently working on a desktop application - a database client (postgres). It's currently in 'alpha' stage. I also have a landing page - http://sanchosql.com
Cheers!
Good luck! The bar is set pretty high by pgAdmin 3, which is no longer maintained. I'm not too excited about pgAdmin 4, as I found that its GUI hinders productivity. Too bad that very few other clients have the visual explain feature from pgAdmin. What features do you plan to include in your database client?
Hi, thank you for your response!
I agree pgAdmin3 is full of features that I probably won't be able to match. Currently, I have an early alpha version which focuses at fundamental features such as simple text editor for SQL queries, and a feature to visually (without code) view and edit tables. I aim to add more features of course and make it more robust. I also focus especially on features useful to software developers.
Cheers
Hi I'm Esteban from Puerto Rico.
I am a software developer by heart but I work in a big company as a data analyst. I want to go indie because I mostly want to do my own thing (be self sufficient) and I dread the cubicle world.
Been developing an attendance tracker app since a couple of months for the app and play store that may be released this week or the next with some luck.
Awesome! Good luck on the journey to Indie.
You're current day job and drive to be Indie sounds very much like mine.
Good luck with the startup! I'd love to see it.
Good luck in your endeavors too mate!
Hello everyone! Happy New Year :)
I'm Pranav - and I'm currently building Cadet (https://getcadet.com) - it's a simple application to help businesses gather feedback and feature requests from their customers.
I have launched an MVP, and I have some awesome beta customers. My plan for 2018 is to finally add a payment gateway to process subscriptions and get to ramen profitability with Cadet.
Hi from Taiwan! I'm working on screencasts and learning material for the Elixir language.
I made my first month's goal of getting to 100 YouTube subscribers so my goal for January is to get to 500 and flip the monetization switch. I'm still deciding how to monetize, so if you have ideas please share!
My goal for the year is to grow revenue enough that I can self-fund without concern about needing to raise investment or have a separate day job.
One thing that always puts me off commercial on-line courses is the inability to dip in and out.
I'm now at the stage of my programming "career" where I am not looking for beginner's guides or that sort of thing. More often, I don;t understand how to approach a specific type of problem in a specific language and I just want a really good, clear explanation of how to go about it.
What that means is that I shy away from video courses because it is "all or nothing". Sometimes, I just want to pay for one video or one tutorial that I know will be clear, thorough and will have anticipated my questions. Too many tutorials assume everything will work exactly as stated and no-one will have a problem applying it to a slightly different scenario.
Perhaps one way for you to differentiate yourself is to have two pricing models. The first is the normal "buy the course" model and the second is "dive into this subject area". If you could offer a teaser video (the first minute or two) and a purchase video then you might find people who know Elixir but still need help to solve problems will buy on a "per use" basis.
Also, of course, you could sell credits - 10 credits = ten and a half videos - so people have an incentive to come back and use your material. Why ten and a half videos? So people start watching video number eleven, realise it is just what they need and buy another batch of ten credits. Always sell an uneven match betwee credits and products.
Hi alchemist,
About monetization you can try using Patreon, in the learning material space, it's very common to see video / screencast creators get substantial amount of money every month from their fan!
Let me introduce myself: I'm Jérémy, I built Hercules 4 years ago, it brings $2.5k MRR.
This year I plan to learn front-end development while building an audience (my goal is to reach 1,000 followers). I'm sick of launching projects in the void!
If you want to give me advice on how to build an audience as a developer, feel free to participate on this IH thread.
Good luck with your 2018 goals!
I will be in Taiwan in March/April -- hope we can meet up!
I also know a few popular Youtubers in Taiwan (Chinese speaking) that might give you advices!
Sounds fun! I'm in the tw elixir group and very nearly did my channel in Chinese but I was afraid that my niche would really be too small, esp on YouTube.
Hi there I'm Vic.
I've created my first side project Alias [www.aliasbot.com]. It's a slack app that lets you set up @mentions for groups of people. You can just @mention the name of the alias, and everyone in that group will be notified.
I have a software dev background but have always been interested in the marketing/business side of software so this is my first attempt at making something myself that I can charge for.
My biggest goal for the next three months is to get featured in the Slack app directory for the Productivity apps. I also want to keep up the current growth and keep iterating on the product based on the user feedback.
Hey Vikyan, Alias looks pretty cool. You mentioned you're using customer feedback to iterate the product right now. Are you tracking usage data to help influence your iterations, too? I haven't built a Slack bot before and I'm curious how much info they allow developers to access.
just curious, how do you charge the users?
It's still in beta so I am not currently charging. I get more value from the early users feedback so I've kept it free for now.
This has allowed me to see how and why people use it and it has made the product better because of it. Squashed bugs, introduced new features, cleared up confusing wording.
When I do decide to charge though, I plan on having a recurring subscription model, $xx/month per user per team. There are various pricing models I'm considering and I'll decide on that when it's the time.
As far as technically how I would charge them, probably using Stripe or other easier to setup subscription plugin.
I commented above Vikyan, but I wanted to mention you might want to check out Cheddar's API. You can integrate it with Stripe, and you can use their usage tracking features for free to see how people are actually using your product before deciding on a pricing model.
Full disclosure: I work there.
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This comment was deleted 9 months ago.